The unpalatable truths of Indian politics.
Having been brought up in an urban set up, one was never able to appreciate the Bahujan politics of the Mayawati-Kanshi Ram brigade. Especially when it came to monumental misuses of public money in to projects of self praise and glorification.
But if one examines the issue closely, there could be another side of the coin. If you were brought up in a suburb and educated in a suburban collage, you would come across many people, who’s family would have changed the surname out of shame of it. I think if a few monuments or a Bahujan movement can change this trend and make every one live as brothers, it is a small price to pay.
But what is most significant with the Bahujan style of politics, is its ideology. The recent differences between the Congress and the BSP over giving the people of UP and Bihar five different states speaks volumes in the difference in ideology.
The Ambedkar and the Neheru ideology. In fact they are both products of Congress, but the two directions of thoughts only represent the historic unilateralism and lack of representation within the Congress.
As a result, one ideology focuses on linguistic vote banks as was then thought important for the stability of the country (on the lines of the Historic USSR now Russia), and the other on pure social reform. One would hazard to support the BSP’s line of thought in this matter (The Ambedkar line of thought).
The recent idea floated by the Congress party of decentralization is an epitome of the mistakes of its past.
What is decentralization?
In simple words it means a parallel of you having to report to n number of bosses instead of one. Imagine a company with 30 different chairpersons, and the share holders running to 30 different people for results, or a collage with 10 principals.
No organization can run without a center, at least a nation. The inherent weakness of the Congress party of not being able to accommodate opinions has resulted in our nation to split like an Amoeba, first under the name of religion and now we are faced with a situation of almost being split under the names of languages and Kashmir.
Dr. B.R. Ambedkar wanted better representation for the people from different regions in the running of the nation. But what has resulted due to the vote-bank politics, is a manipulation of the electoral system, in to a weak and alienated center.
That is why even the prime minister of the country has to say that “India cannot be run from New Delhi alone”. God knows where he intends to run the country from. However one strongly feels that the Congress party is in the hands of a listening leadership and they would take steps to correct its organizational defects for it to last for posterity.
But on the other hand it is commendable, the simple courage of BSP to speak out the unpalatable truths of Indian politics and setting the pace for the linguistic politics to becoming obsolete.
But that is where BSP’s dissimilarity with the Congress and the BJP ends; at the real hardcore reforms none of them have the courage to brave the mist.
Mrs Indira Gandhi had the courage to strengthen the national banking policy; Morarji Desai had the wisdom to put up a national food grain program. Why the political fraternity of today can’t put together a national reservation policy. Surely the Dalit is a national responsibility, so why do they want the partition the reservation policy. I think this is another example of weakening center and the lack of national leadership.
Congress is now talking of supporting sections of the Muslim community under the OBC arrangement, but what about bringing the benefits of SC and ST to them.
They are responding to the arms twisting of Omar Abdulla and talking autonomy in J&K, but why don’t they talk about giving a separate state status to Jammu-Ladhak region, and covering more than 50% of Muslim population of the valley under the national reservation policy.
Just as Pakistan wants to burn itself down in India centric rage, India wants to do the same with Pakistan centric policies, Kashmir autonomy would be a Pakistan centric thought, and they cannot prevent every other state from asking for the same status a few years down the line. Coming back to the point, accommodating half of nation’s population under a reservation policy is no easy task.
And to support such a huge scale of uplift program they have to have an exit policy, for the sections who have reached a good level of social uplift. It seems two generations of a family is a good enough period to reach such statues.
With the turn of the trend and as most political organizations step out of the ICU, they should have an agenda towards a more meaningful use of national resources. And one good step has been taken by the BSP, let’s hope they mean what they say, and hopefully restructuring of linguistic states into non-polar instruments of running the country would soon be a reality.
